A Mystery for Thoreau

by Kin Platt, Christopher J. Platt (Foreword by)

Overview

Sixteen-year-old Oliver Puckle, news gatherer for the Concord Freeman in the summer of 1846, has his work cut out for him when word arrives of a gruesome murder at Walden Pond. It seems the only citizen who is not a suspect is the poetphilosopher Henry David Thoreau, who spent the night locked in the local jail for refusing to pay his poll tax. As Oliver leads the charge to unravel the mystery, he has much to learn from his colorful neighbors – among them Ralph Waldo Emerson and a feisty teenage Louisa May Alcott – but unexpectedly it is the recluse Thoreau himself who provides particular help to the investigation.

This posthumously published novel, set in the famously literary town of Concord, Massachusetts, is rich with intrigue and witty detail and features a foreword by the author's son.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466804388
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/30/2008
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	899 KB
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

KIN PLATT (1911–2003) had a varied and illustrious career, writing for radio, comics, and television, and publishing over thirty books, including two adventures in the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series, and the Edgar Award– winning young adult novel Sinbad and Me.

KIN PLATT (1911-2003) had a varied and illustrious career, writing for radio, comics, and television, and publishing over thirty books, including two adventures in the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series, and the Edgar Award- winning young adult novel Sinbad and Me.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 8 Up

Set in Concord, MA, in 1886, this mystery centers around Oliver Puckle, a 16-year-old reporter who gathers news for his uncle's paper. When the body of an elderly community member is discovered near Henry David Thoureau's cottage at Walden Pond, Oliver is determined to solve the crime. He soon surmises that the murder is related to the recent arrival of an attractive young woman, who has since gone missing. Although Thoreau, an acquaintance of the narrator's, uses his knowledge of the woods to help interpret clues, he is more a decorative overlay than an integral character in the whodunit. The same can be said of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott, who both make cameo appearances at the newspaper office. A foreword by the author's son recounts Platt's career and explains how this book was found among his papers and published posthumously. Taken as a whole, the novel seems sketchily researched and hastily thrown together-more a work in progress than a completed manuscript.-Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NY

School Library Journal